


Close Calls

by kittykatthetacodemon



Series: Fundamentals [2]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:45:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittykatthetacodemon/pseuds/kittykatthetacodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danger had become everything for the Losers—they lived and breathed it, ran a fine line between reckless and out-of-control, each day an exercise in jumping off buildings and hoping the others would be there to catch them when they fell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Calls

**Author's Note:**

> This is an alternate POV fic based on Misunderstandings. Hope you enjoy!

It wasn’t the first time Jensen had been in danger; it was hardly the second, the third, the _thirtieth_.  Danger had become everything for the Losers—they lived and breathed it, ran a fine line between reckless and out-of-control, each day an exercise in jumping off buildings and hoping the others would be there to catch them when they fell. 

Cougar knew one day they would miss, knew that one day they would fail to stick the landing and that carefully-controlled descent would become a freefall to their deaths, knew it the same way he knew that he would never slow down or look before he leaped, just like the rest of them.

He would follow where they led, even to his death.

But—and this was the point—it wasn’t the first time Jensen had been in danger.  It wasn’t even the first time in the last few _weeks_.  So Cougar hadn’t panicked when Jensen’s voice had cut in over the radio, whip-crack sharp and suddenly fully in focus—he and Aisha and Clay had been bickering, something about the Bahamas, and the complete turn-around in tone was enough to have the team obeying him before the words fully registered.

Jensen had started the countdown on a room full of explosives.  _Christ_.

Cougar was the only one truly clear of the compound, and the way his chest seized up instinctively with panic had nothing to do with his own safety and everything to do with the fact that there was nothing he could do to help.  There was nothing to shoot, nothing living down there except his team.

He flicked his gaze from building to building, tracking movement as the others scrambled clear.  Aisha appeared first—it figured—followed by Pooch a second later, sprinting for the tree line.  Clay scrambled into view not long after, running flat out in the other direction, which only left—

There was a very obvious lack of movement from the main building, where their last teammate had yet to emerge.

“Jensen,” Cougar said, scope trained on the glass-fronted doors of the building.  When he shifted just a little, he could see through them, through the lobby, and at last to the small, rectangular window embedded in the stairwell door.  There was no sign of Jensen.  “Everyone else is outside.  Move faster.”

“Fuck you, I had to take the stairs,” Jensen barked back, clearly rattled.  There was a flash of movement, and then a slice of his head and torso appeared through the little bit of glass.

Cougar felt a hot burst of relief, quickly swallowed up.  The door did not open.

“Shit!” Jensen said, a confirmation that something had gone wrong, and now his voice was slipping towards panic, taking Cougar with it.  “Fuck!”

“Window!” Cougar said, kicking himself for not shooting the glass out sooner, before Jensen had gotten held up.  Jensen, thankfully, understood what he meant immediately, and his face was replaced by his gun.  Cougar shut his eyes briefly against the muzzle flash—and when he opened them again, Jensen was already stumbling through the doorway, his arm contorted strangely through the opening to get at the door handle.  He ran for the exit.

Over the mics, there was a low, heavy sound.  In his peripheral vision, there was a faint flash from higher up; centered in the crosshairs of his scope, Jensen’s face twisted strangely, his expression warped with an awful kind of realization.

“Cougar,” he said, nothing more, and Cougar watched his lips move, watched his steps falter, and felt his own body seize up like it was anticipating a blow.

The building exploded in a shower of dust and debris, a flash of light, and this time Cougar didn’t look away to save his eyes, _couldn’t_ look away, because it was _Jensen_ and he couldn’t do a damn thing and it was like expecting another stair in the dark and half-falling, like taking the leap and realizing there was nothing left to catch him.  He hardly even noticed he was shouting—English and Spanish and stupid, meaningless noise—as concrete rained down and Jensen disappeared from sight.  There were other buildings going up as well, other voices screaming over the earpiece, but Cougar was locked hopelessly on the place where he had last seen Jensen.  There were words coming out of his mouth that meant nothing over the earth-shattering explosions, the ringing in his ears, that little voice in the back of his head just screaming, screaming, _screaming_.

This was sick and twisted and so stupidly, agonizingly familiar—watching helplessly while the helicopter warped and burned all over again, except this time it was _Jensen_ and this time it was killing him—this was _Jake_ , this was _friend_ and _team_ and something else entirely twisted together hot and possessive in his chest and this time, _this time_ it was going to kill him, this time he was actually going to die.

The explosions stopped.  Cougar choked down a shout and went silent.

Clay pulled himself together first.  “Everyone, sound off,” he said.  “Status report.”

“I was knocked off my feet, nothing more,” Aisha said.

“The Pooch is clear,” Pooch said.  “A little pissed off, but fine.”

There was a half-second pause.  “Jensen?” Clay said slowly.

Cougar sucked in a breath and spoke through numb lips.  “He was still inside.”

* * *

There was something to be said for the end of Cougar’s world—it was quiet.

Cougar hated it.  His life for the last few years had revolved almost exclusively around his team, and within the team his life had revolved around Jensen, a constant presence at his side and a voice in his ear that could stop talking, sometimes, but was always there when he most needed to hear it.  Now the silence was deafening.

There were no more near-misses, no more miracles.  Jensen was—he had—

He and the others met up at the edge of what had once been a compound and was now nothing more than a pile of rubble and dust.  No one spoke.  Cougar got the feeling that Aisha wanted to leave—an explosion like this would surely be noticed, and they couldn’t afford to be caught by the authorities—but even she was silent, and Cougar thought about being grateful only because it was better than thinking about anything else.

Aisha still only gave them five minutes for grief.  “We should go,” she said, looking at Clay, who said nothing.

“Are you crazy?” Pooch snapped, infuriated.  “We can’t just walk away—it’s _Jensen_.  We are not going to _leave_ him there.”

“He’s _dead_ , Pooch,” Aisha snapped back.  “There’s nothing we can do for him.  And if we’re caught here, Max is the least of our worries.  This is a crime scene!  There are going to be questions!”

“That doesn’t mean we have to just—”  With effort, Pooch cut himself off.  “Clay, Cougar, back me up here.”

“Pooch,” Clay said, low, and ran a hand over his face.

Pooch exploded, shouting curses and expletives and every insult he knew, and Clay just took it.  Cougar understood both impulses—to lay blame and to accept it—but it didn’t make a difference, either way, and in the end it wasn’t any fault of theirs.  Fixing his eyes on the place where he had last seen Jensen didn’t provide any answers, either, because there weren’t any. 

He could say it.  He had to say it.  Jensen was dead.  There was only Max, now, the mission, and for the first time Cougar thought about _after_ and realized he didn’t believe there would be one.  Jensen had always been the one with the plans, the future—Cougar had a big gun and the patience to see this thing through, and now that was all.

The brim of his hat was cold between numb fingers.  He took it off and tossed it aside, watched the wind carry it a few extra feet away and made no move to pick it up again.

It had gone quiet again behind him.  Cougar turned and found them all looking at him, wary and still, but it wasn’t like he had anything to say—he shrugged and reached up to push back his hair, just for the sake of having something to do with his hands.

“Cougar,” Clay said, but Cougar didn’t want to hear it.

“Stop,” he said, and Clay did.  “I’m staying.”

Clay looked at him for a long time.  At last he shook his head.  “Alright,” he said, huffing out a breath.  “Alright.  We’ll stay.”

“Clay!” Aisha snapped.

“Shut the fuck up, Aisha,” Clay said, because now that he had made up his mind there would be no changing it.  “They’re right.  He’s _team_.  You can do whatever the hell you want, but we’re staying.  No man left behind.”

“Jesus Christ, thank you,” Pooch muttered.

Aisha looked between the two of them, searching for weakness, and then turned to Cougar, who stared calmly back.  “Fine,” she said.  “We’ll do it your way.”

“Oh, wow, _thanks_ ,” Pooch said, sarcastic, and his mic was picking up a weird noise in the background that carried over into Cougar’s earpiece.  “Like we needed your _permission_ —”

Wait—that wasn’t coming from Pooch.  What was—

Cougar made an abrupt gesture, and everyone went quiet.  “Cougar?” Clay said after a few silent seconds, and then shut up when there was a repeat of the sound that had caught Cougar’s attention—something shifting over rubble, a cough that didn’t come from any of them.

“Oh,” said Jensen’s hoarse voice over the comms, and Cougar’s heart leapt into his throat.  “Oh, this is bad.”

* * *

The next few minutes were pandemonium—Pooch and Clay and even Aisha shouting, threatening and relieved in turns, each incomprehensible as they fought to talk over the other.  Hatless, Cougar had to hide his eyes with his hands and just breathe in the quiet darkness for a while, Jensen a low murmur in his ear underneath the other competing voices.

Christ.  _Christ_.  He could breathe again.

Cougar listened as Jensen started listing off what he knew—dark, relatively stable, pinned, limited oxygen—and it took him longer than it should have to realize that he wasn’t responding to any of the chaotic noise that should have been coming over loud and clear in his earpiece.  They could hear him, but he couldn’t hear them.

Whistling sharply, Cougar made sure he had everyone’s attention before speaking.  “Jensen, can you hear us?”

“—really hoping that none of you are dead, okay?  I mean, obviously that would suck, but I also really need you to come get me out of here.  Preferably before I suffocate.  If I survive a fucking explosion and die anyway because I was _buried alive_ , I’m going to be really, _really_ pissed off.  I mean, I know there are worse ways to die, but you assholes had better come and fucking get me—”

Clay sighed, relief battling with annoyance and affection in his tone.  Anyone who spent time around Jensen quickly became accustomed to that particular blend of emotion.  “I’ll take that as a _no_ ,” he said.  “Come on, boys, let’s go digging.”

* * *

It felt a bit like whiplash to slide from grief to relief and straight on to urgency, but Jensen had been dead once already that day and Cougar didn’t want it to happen again.

He could only watch when the explosions had started.  Here, though, here was something he could do.

Jensen’s earpiece was still broadcasting a GPS signal, one that Jensen had modified to be accurate within about two meters—better than the very best civilian GPS, but nothing like he had managed with military satellite access.  It would be close enough for this.

Cougar had actually seen the explosion, seen the moment of impact and watched Jensen disappear, and wasn’t surprised that the GPS locator was pinging only a short distance from that point.  It seemed that the blast had thrown Jensen forward, away from the majority of the wreckage—a dozen yards back, the mess of concrete and twisted wreckage was piled nearly a story high.

He, Aisha, and Clay worked at moving the lighter pieces of rubble and concrete, trying to clear a circle of space centered on the GPS signal.  The whole time, Jensen mumbled over the earpiece—something about cruelty to witches, whatever that meant, and then something incomprehensible about cats and nickels—Cougar guessed that had something to do with him.  At one point, he said the words “Aisha’s murderous orgasm face” with relative clarity, and Clay almost choked.

It was slow, methodical work, and it was excruciating to listen to Jensen’s voice get slower and slower, softer and softer, until it was nothing more than a slur of sounds.  Eventually, that stopped altogether.

Cougar told himself that Jensen was just trying to conserve oxygen.  He didn’t really believe it.

They moved faster.  After a while, Pooch came back with the truck, working it slowly across the fields of rubble to get as close to the pit as possible—there was at least one piece of concrete large enough that they would need the truck to pull it free, and possibly more beneath that.

Jensen made a sudden noise, somewhere between a laugh and a cough, and Cougar startled enough that he almost dropped his side of a piece of concrete that he and Clay were moving and had to fumble to regain his grip.  On the other side, Clay was doing the same thing.  “Freudian slip,” Jensen mumbled, or something like it, and went silent.

Cougar and Clay shared a quick glance.  “Let’s hurry it along, Pooch,” Clay shouted, turning to look over his shoulder.

“Boss,” Cougar said, feeling his grip start to slip again.

Clay turned back, looking apologetic.  “Alright, nice and slow,” he said, and he and Cougar shuffled to the side, out of the way.

It was another ten minutes before Pooch had the truck in position, and Clay and Cougar had done their best to clear out a little pit in the rubble, making sure all the pieces in the sloping sides were relatively stable.  By the time Aisha came down with the end of the chain looped around her shoulders, Cougar was starting to get antsy again.  Jensen hadn’t made a sound the whole time.

“The chain’s secured,” Pooch said, scrambling toward them.  “How are we going to work this, Clay?”

Clay was examining the whole precarious structure like it was a Jenga tower he didn’t want to knock down.  “We need to lift straight up,” he said, eyeing the slab as a whole.  It was tilted at an angle, somewhere between 25 and 30 degrees, and while Cougar and Clay had cleared away everything from the top, a few of the edges were still buried.  “If he’s underneath, any shifting could crush him.”

“That’ll pull a lot of debris loose,” Pooch said, doubtful.

Cougar eyed the problem.  The highest point of the vaguely-rectangular slab was a corner, propped on top of a partially upright section of what might have once been a wall.  “Keep it at an angle,” he said, inspiration striking.  “Slide it straight up the slope.  Less disturbance, no tilting or crushing.”

Clay narrowed his eyes, and then nodded.  “That could work,” he said.

Cougar checked the time.  “Let’s move,” he said—almost fifteen minutes since Jensen had gone quiet.

Between the four of them, they could hardly shift the enormous chunk of concrete, but they forced it to slide just enough that Pooch could secure the chain around the bottom section, just below where two of the corners formed the widest point of the block.  Pooch scrambled back up the slope, and a few seconds later there was the sound of an engine turning over, an old truck sputtering to life.

The chain rattled and caught.  Still, it felt like an age before anything happened, and then Pooch swore over the comms and the truck’s engine roared, and suddenly the slab of concrete was sliding.  Cougar and Clay helped steady it as it moved, with Aisha watching the chain as their spotter in case something went wrong.

“I can see him,” she called abruptly.

Cougar wanted to drop what he was doing, but if he moved the slab could very well slip free and crush Jensen, so he stayed in place and ignored the bite of concrete against his already scraped and aching palms.  As the block moved, Cougar managed to catch glimpses of a small pocket of space, first, and then, at last, Jensen—pale hair made white by concrete dust, a dirty-bright t-shirt, a flash of light on round lenses—before he had to shift his attention back to his side of the slab.  It was almost to the top of the slope.

Something dripped from the bottom—blood, still wet, on a piece of twisted rebar.

“Cougar, we’ve got this,” Clay shouted over the roar of the truck.  “ _Go_.”

Aisha’s hands pushed his aside, and, released, he took off like a shot.  Looking head on, not piecemeal, he could see that Jensen was intact, but far too still—a broken, dirty doll tossed haphazardly amid piles of concrete rubble.  He had been sheltered from most of the wreckage by the same slab that the Losers were hauling away, but there was a bright red stain of blood high on his left thigh—that would be the blood on the rebar, Cougar thought.  Everything else was hidden under a muted grey layer of dust.  His glasses were cracked.

He wasn’t _moving_.

Cougar absorbed all this in the few seconds it took him to scramble back down the treacherous incline towards him, doing his best not to disturb the now-precarious piles of wreckage—moving the slab had loosened what had once been reasonably stable.  Bits of rock and dirt went skittering down with him, and a few struck Jensen; still, he didn’t so much as twitch.

If he was dead— _really_ dead—because Cougar hadn’t gotten there fast enough—

Cougar shoved that thought aside and skidded to his knees by Jensen’s right side.  First things first—he pushed two fingers against the side of Jensen’s throat, looking for— _there_.

A heartbeat, far too slow and weak, but present.

“There’s a pulse,” Cougar reported, weak with relief, and ignored whatever the others said in response.

He worked at clearing away the dust and dirt from Jensen’s face, where it had begun to dry—tacky with blood from a gash on his forehead.  If he was breathing, it was too weak to feel, even when he had cleared away the grime.  “He’s not breathing,” he said tersely, and Clay said what he was thinking.

“ _Fuck_.”

Cougar’s gut reaction was to _make_ him breathe, but—he ran quick hands over Jensen’s torso—he already had broken ribs, and he didn’t want to risk puncturing a lung if he didn’t have to.  Quickly, he assessed the rest of him—as far as he could tell under a layer of dirt, the only real concerns were the still-bleeding leg, the ribs, and the fact that Jensen _still wasn’t breathing_.

His lips were turning faintly blue.

In his ear, Pooch was muttering, “Come on, Jensen, come on, Jay,” but Jensen couldn’t hear that without a working earpiece, so he added his voice on top of Pooch’s.

“Come on, Jensen,” he repeated, fingers to his pulse.  “Jensen, breathe.”  He tapped lightly at Jensen’s face, trying to get a response.  “Jensen.  _Jake._ ”  He was going to have to risk the punctured lung in a minute.  “ _Respire_ , _por favor_ —damn.”

He wasn’t entirely sure why he did it, because it had absolutely no medical benefit, except—well.  Jensen _wasn’t_ _breathing_ , and he was angry.

So he slapped him across the face.

Jensen jolted like he had been electrified and sucked in a deep breath, coughing it back out a second later.  Cougar stopped him from bolting upright with one hand pressed lightly to his chest, careful pressure that didn’t stop Jensen from choking.  “Don’t you _dare_ ,” he ground out, not entirely certain what he meant, but Jensen’s face—eyes still shut tight—turned a little toward the sound and he kept breathing, kept gasping in air, until that awful blue tinge faded from his lips.

“Okay,” he muttered, “okay,” and then a little louder, “he’s breathing.”

Pooch actually whooped.  “Outstanding,” Clay said, a softer version of his usual exuberance.

 _Okay_ , he thought again _._ He took off his jacket, wadded it up, and held it to Jensen’s leg, trying to stop the bleeding—probably grinding in all the dirt and dust along with it, but preventing him from bleeding out was the first priority.  Applying pressure should have hurt, but Jensen didn’t seem to feel it.

“What next?” Aisha said.

If Cougar turned and looked up, he could just make out her silhouette against the setting sun.  “Get him to a hospital,” Cougar said immediately. 

Clay made a harsh sound.  “Cougar, you know I trust your judgment, but in case you weren’t aware, we are _wanted fugitives_.”

“He was _in an explosion_ ,” Cougar shot back immediately.  “I can bind the ribs and stitch what’s bleeding, but if there are internal injuries, we have no way to know until he’s already dead.”  That wasn’t even mentioning potential damage from the lack of oxygen.  Jensen’s eyes were still closed, and they had no way to tell until he was conscious again.

Clay was silent.

“Damn it, Clay,” Pooch snapped, breaking the impasse.  “Did you miss the part where we had to dig him out of the wreckage of a three story building?  If he dies because we’re dicking around here, it’ll be on _you_.  We’ve conned hospitals before, and we can do it again.”

“Let’s _move_ ,Clay,” Aisha cut in.  “Whatever you decide, he’ll have to get out of that hole eventually.  Pooch can clear the bed of the truck.”

Cougar had never liked Aisha more.  Mostly because he didn’t like or trust her at all, but at that moment he could have.  Maybe.  Probably not.

She might be grudgingly useful, but she wasn’t _team_.  Jensen was.

Under his hands, Cougar could feel Jensen starting to shiver—shock was setting in.  “Do it, Clay,” he said, not caring that Clay was, as far as he was concerned, still his commanding officer in almost every way that mattered.  Watching Jensen bleeding and struggling for air under his hands was not one of them.  “Pooch, _hurry_.”  Up on the top of the slope, Aisha was looking at him; he nodded at her and she nodded back before disappearing, a strange sort of solidarity.

Behind him, Jensen’s breath rattled harshly in his chest, and Cougar snapped back around so quickly he heard his neck crack.  He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t Jensen watching him through half-lidded eyes, squinting a little around the cracks in his lenses.  His mouth shaped Cougar’s name, and the mic picked up the faint, gritty noise of it, almost too quiet to hear naturally.

Surprised, Cougar made an involuntary sound.  “He’s awake,” he said, and let go of Jensen’s shirt—when had he latched onto it in the first place?—leaning in so he could shade Jensen’s eyes.

Jensen’s pupils were ragged, blown wide.  He was tracking—when Cougar shifted, he could follow—but his eyes kept sliding out of focus, and he didn’t seem to notice.

He was also gearing himself up to say something, sucking in quick, light breaths.  “How?” he managed, and Cougar wanted to tell him to stop talking, but it wasn’t as if he would listen.

“Your GPS,” Cougar told him, hoping a shorter response would end the conversation.

Jensen wasn’t done.  “Pooch,” he said.  “Clay?”

Cougar wanted to slap him again— _he_ was the one who hadn’t gotten outside in time—but he settled for a bitten off, “Fine.”

Jensen shifted a little, and Cougar felt a little rush of blood under his hand, finally soaking through the jacket he was holding clamped to Jensen’s leg.  Fuck.

There was the slightest pressure against his own leg.  He glanced down and saw Jensen’s hand, fingers trying to grasp at the fabric of his jeans.

Jensen’s eyes were locked on his when he looked up again, strangely intent for an injured man with a possible concussion.  He took a couple more quick breaths—careful with the ribs, Cougar thought, careful—and managed to say, “What?”

Cougar never figured out what he meant, because that was the moment Jensen started to cough.  Deep, rasping coughs, the kind that shook him all over, his limbs jerking limply against the concrete, and his breathing turned into wheezing and suddenly there was blood on his lips, stark and red against the whiteness of the dust on his face and the paleness of his skin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Cougar snarled, and tried to get Jensen farther upright so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood.  He had thought Jensen dead once that day already, and once was enough—Jensen was _not allowed to die_.  “Hospital, Clay, _now_ ,” he said, furious and desperate, and hardly cared whether or not Clay’s string of curses was meant to be a negative or an affirmative.  He would _carry Jensen there_ if he had to, and damn the consequences, and it was entirely possible he had said that last bit aloud, but if he had at least no one was bothering to argue with him.

Jensen wasn’t tracking at all anymore—his eyes were rolling wildly in his head, whites showing, and the choking sounds he was making were almost worse than the eerie stillness and lack of breathing from earlier.  At least that had been painless—this looked and sounded _horrible_ , like he was drowning in his own lungs.

He very well could be.

Aisha was the first to skid down the slope towards him, and he curled over Jensen to shield him from the little shower of debris.  She had a white rag in her hands, and she shoved him aside to get at Jensen’s leg, binding the already-bloody jacket more tightly to the injury.  It would have to do until they reached a hospital.  Clay and Pooch slid down from the other side of the little pit, a neon orange blanket tied to poles carried between them, and Cougar honestly could not care less where they had gotten it, only that they had.

They said things to him, and he responded, but for the life of him he could never remember what he or they said.  He did remember the sound Jensen made when they lifted him onto the makeshift stretcher, and again when they lifted that to carry him out—the way Jensen’s eyes rolled between them without recognition, like a spooked horse.

Cougar thought Jensen would have been screaming if he could have, but the choking sounds he was making were infinitely worse.  He didn’t realize that he was still talking—that Jensen was still following his voice—until he went to take a step away from the stretcher and clamber up into the bed of the truck, and found that Jensen’s hand had latched like a vice onto the bottom of his shirt.  Cougar couldn’t do it—Pooch had to reach over and gently tug him free.

Cougar wished he could switch off his mic.  Whatever his voice was doing, it wasn’t something he wanted the whole team to hear.

And then he was in the bed of the truck, and he let Pooch help him arrange Jensen—who wasn’t even fighting them anymore, _Jesus Christ_ , just accepting it—with his back to Cougar’s chest, Cougar’s arms wrapped carefully around him and his head settled against Cougar’s shoulder.  There was a smear of wetness against Cougar’s neck where Jensen was still breathing out blood-tinted air.

He tuned back into the sound of his own voice and realized he was reciting the Our Father, Spanish and English phrases dripping from his lips without conscious effort— _hágase tu voluntad—thy will be done_ —

Pooch corralled Aisha and Clay into the cabin of the truck and then threw himself into the driver’s seat, and there was a great, grinding _crunch_ as he threw the truck into gear and started to drive.

Jensen was larger than him, taller and broader across the shoulders, but Cougar had wrapped himself around Jensen so completely that the bumps and potholes in the unpaved road did little more than rattle them.  Cougar kept himself stiffly upright and held Jensen back against his chest, making sure he stayed at an angle where he could breathe, and felt each of those breaths like a death rattle against his own chest, painful and harsh.

His lips were still moving, filling the silence with whatever passed through his mind—something panicked and incomprehensible, he was sure—and Jensen was still with him, his face tucked against Cougar’s neck and his breathing catching and relaxing every time Cougar paused and then started to speak again.

He realized suddenly that he had left his hat behind, but it didn’t matter.  It would only have been in the way.

The truck hit the biggest pothole yet and Jensen made an absolutely terrifying sound, worse than nails on a chalkboard—Clay and Aisha spun around completely in their seats and Pooch jumped so hard he actually swerved in the road and had to jerk the wheel back around again.  “Jesus,” Clay breathed, white as a sheet—oddly enough, Aisha had gone pale as well—and Cougar snarled, “Faster,” trying to steady Jensen’s head and ribs and leg and lungs all at once.  It was like trying to hold water in a sieve.

Jensen started to struggle, making it that much harder.  “Jake,” Cougar said, trying to get Jensen to focus on him again, but he was pushing against Cougar’s hands, trying to work himself free, and it took everything Cougar had to keep him still without hurting him further, and now each bloody breath Jake blew out came out half a sob, half a high, pained noise that just wouldn’t stop.  “Jake, fuck, _lo siento—_ ”  Cougar transferred both of Jensen’s wrists to one hand so he could reach up and turn Jensen’s head, speaking directly into Jensen’s ear.  “Please,” he said, “Jake, please, stop moving, you’re making it worse.  _Lo siento_ ,” he said, and then just kept repeating it until Jensen slowly stopped fighting him, turned into him and went back to breathing wetly against his neck.  That animalistic whine stuttered to a halt.

There was maybe a minute of quiet, where Jensen’s breathing got slower and weaker.  “Three minutes out,” Pooch shouted back at them.

“Just a little longer, Jake,” Cougar said, coaxing, jostling him a little.  “Just a little more.”

Jensen hummed softly, almost like a response, sighed out another breath against his neck, and then just—stopped.

He went limp, utterly boneless.  The rasping heave of his chest against Cougar’s stilled.

It took him a too-long second to process, and then Cougar lifted a cold, shaking hand to press bloody fingers against his neck.  There was no pulse.

“No,” he said, and for a long moment that was the only thought his brain would provide— _no_ , _no_ , _please no_ —and then reason and training kicked back in, and he was moving.  “Clay!” he shouted, but Clay was already pushing himself through the undersized window separating the bed of the truck from the cab, twisting out so he could get to Jensen and Cougar.  Aisha was shouting at Pooch, but the laws of physics would only let the truck go so fast.

Broken ribs and punctured lungs—none of it would matter if he died before he got to the hospital, and Clay helped to heave Jensen’s limp form off Cougar and lay him out flat in the bed of the moving truck.  Clay braced Jensen, holding him still against the truck’s jerking and rattling with his whole body while Cougar started CPR, Clay’s quiet voice counting off _one, two, three, four, breath_ just clearly enough for Cougar to hear over the ringing in his ears, over and over again.  Cougar’s vision was starting to blur—he didn’t know if he was out of breath or starting to cry, and he could practically feel Clay’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his head, but he didn’t try to stop him and that was all that mattered.

He blew another breath past lips that were starting to go cool— _please, please—_ and this time it was Jensen who forced it back out and sucked in another, and then another.  Cougar almost fell over in his haste to check his pulse one more time, and he had never known relief as concrete as the feeling of Jensen’s heartbeat present again and steadying under the pads of his fingers.  He curled down further, ignoring Clay completely—he was shouting something up into the cabin, and whatever it was Pooch could deal with it—and pushed his forehead against Jensen’s, ignoring the gritty press of dirt and dust.

“If you stop breathing again, I will kill you myself,” he said, Jensen’s blood on his lips and his fingers pressed to the weak pulse of Jensen’s heart, still present, still alive, and then Pooch was screaming into the emergency room parking lot and there were other things he needed to be doing.

* * *

Of course, Jensen crashed two more times after being admitted to the hospital.  Cougar should have known he would only be tempting fate and tempting Jensen, who had never met an order he couldn’t take as a challenge.

* * *

The hospital room was quiet and dark, nothing but the beeping of the monitors and the hiss of the ventilator to keep Cougar company.  Clay and Aisha had left hours before, at Cougar’s urging—the hunt for Max could continue, and simultaneously draw attention away from Jensen, who couldn’t be moved.

Jensen.  Jensen was in the room, too, and yet he wasn’t, because a Jensen who was unconscious and hooked to machines, unable to breathe on his own, was hardly Jensen at all.  Jake Jensen was never as still, never as silent, as when he was unconscious—even in sleep, Jensen moved, talked, _breathed on his own_.

And, of course, if he were simply asleep, he would have already woken up.

Cougar missed his hat, missed the stupidly comforting security of it, of shading his eyes and showing the world only what he wanted them to see.  This felt far too exposed—even _Clay_ had noticed, and Clay had never, not once, been able to read Cougar when Cougar didn’t want to be read.  Cougar needed to get it together, because there was no way he was going anywhere, not even for his hat, until Jensen woke up— _when_ , not _if_ —and once Jensen was awake Cougar wouldn’t have anything to hide behind.

To Jensen, Cougar had always been an open book, hat or no.  Any secrets he had left were only secrets still because Jensen had allowed him to keep them, and Cougar had worked too hard to keep this one to let it slip free now.

Damn it, he needed his hat.

Like the other man had heard him, Pooch came quietly through the door to the room, Cougar’s hat in hand.  “Look what I found, man,” Pooch said quietly, and held it out carefully for Cougar to take.

Cougar spoke normally, because it wouldn’t bother Jensen, not like this.  “Thanks,” he said, settling it into place, tilting the brim down.  If he had expected to feel abruptly _better_ , he had been mistaken.  He felt more protected, certainly, another piece of his armor in place, but Jensen was still—well.  And Pooch was still looking at him like he could see through him, and that was new, that was different, and Cougar didn’t like it.  He shifted in place.  “You should go home,” he said, trying to keep the conversation from going where he was starting to think it was going.

Pooch ignored him.  “I know you’re in love with him.”

Ah.  There it was.  Cougar tipped his head down further, and said nothing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Cougar tipped his chair back onto two legs and put his feet up, one at a time, onto the chair across from him, then moved his hat so it was resting on his face instead of the top of his head.  “It’s not important,” he said into the darkness, muffled by the leather.

The pause was judgmental, and telling.  If Pooch thought he could outwait a sniper, though, he had another thing coming.

It seemed Pooch knew it, too, because he blew out a sigh.  “Cougs, listen,” he said.  “He _is_ going to wake up.  And when he does, you have to tell him.”

Cougar snorted.

“You do,” Pooch insisted, almost urgent.  “This has gone on long enough.  It’s killing me just to watch—I don’t want to know what it does to the two of you.”

Something in him tightened, a spring coiling tighter and tighter, and then snapped loose.  Slowly, he readjusted his hat, lowered his legs, let his chair tip back to a more stable position.  “The _two_ of us?” Cougar repeated, slow.

Pooch, rueful, shook his head and refused to respond.  “Tell him, Cougs,” he repeated instead.

* * *

Pooch was right, and Jensen _did_ wake up.  That tiny, tightly-wound piece of him that hadn’t stopped screaming since the explosion—since before that, even, since Bolivia and a helicopter and Max, fucking _Max_ —took a breath when Jensen came off the ventilator, and a deeper one when Jensen finally opened his eyes.

And then he opened his mouth, and he was still so utterly, idiotically, perfectly _Jensen_.  Cougar didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

* * *

Cougar wasn’t stupid, and of course Jensen wasn’t stupid either, which was why he knew— _knew_ —that avoidance wasn’t the way to go.

Yet something about Jensen kept flipping the switch on the fight-or-flight response in Cougar’s head, and of course the scale always tipped towards flight, because Cougar would rather cut off his own arm than cause Jensen any more pain.  All he knew was that every time he looked at Jensen, he could only think about Jensen disappearing in the explosion, about how still and heavy Jensen’s body had been in his arms, about the blood that had caked to his skin and dried there.

Cougar had looked at himself in the mirror in the hospital bathroom and taken it in—his clothes were a lost cause, and he had been staring at the blood on his hands for hours, but he hadn’t quite realized that his lips and the side of his neck had also dried a rusty brown-red—the places where Jensen had breathed against him and where Cougar had been forced to breathe _for_ him.

He had looked like half a corpse himself.  Almost seriously, he had thought that if it meant Jensen lived, he would give the other half as well.

But Jensen was still Jensen, and in truth Cougar knew that avoiding him wouldn’t solve anything.  Jensen was already getting impatient, taking Cougar’s distance and silences as a challenge rather than a sign that he should take a step back, and there was only so much longer that Jensen could be satisfied with trailing along behind him, talking away like there was nothing wrong.  Cougar had to figure out how to _fix this_ , how to go back to living with Jensen practically in his pockets without feeling like he had to get closer still—had to get as far away as possible—all at the same time.

He just needed a little space until he could figure out how to put it all away again, back in those boxes and behind the walls he had spent so long building up between them.

Pooch was wrong.  Jensen didn’t have to know.

* * *

He spent his time at the safe house becoming even more hyperaware of every noise that Jensen could make, as if his entire experience with the Losers hadn’t been an exercise in learning them anyway.  The sound of him tripping into the doorframe almost didn’t register—Jensen was skilled and precise in the field, and very much _not_ everywhere else, like it was a switch he could toggle on and off at will.

When Jensen suddenly stopped talking, cutting off in the middle of a sentence, that was Cougar’s cue to look around.  For a second they were both frozen, and then Jensen took a single step away from the door, let out a single, shaky exhale, and went down.

Cougar _lunged_ across the room and caught him by the shoulders before he could do more than fall to his knees.  “Breathe, Jensen,” he said, because Jensen didn’t seem to be doing it on his own.  “You’re alright.  Breathe through it.”

Jensen just blinked at him, swaying lightly against Cougar’s hands, but then he sucked in a quick gulp of air—good—and then another and another, faster and faster—not so good—until he was almost hyperventilating.  “Slow down,” Cougar said.  “Jensen, you need to slow down.  You’re going to make yourself pass out.”  Jensen didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes starting to roll back a little in his head, and Cougar caught his chin in his hand and made Jensen look at him.  “Hey, no.  Don’t do that.”  With his other hand, he reached for one of Jensen’s arms and dragged Jensen’s hand to his chest, keeping him steady with the hand on his chin.  “Look at me, Jake.  Breathe.”  He tugged a little on Jensen’s chin until Jensen met his eyes, and then breathed deep, letting Jensen feel the movement of his chest.

Jensen breathed, too, and followed suit.  Cougar let go for a second to move his hands back to Jensen’s shoulders, and Jensen latched onto the front of his shirt with a death grip to keep himself steady, as if Cougar would have ever let him fall.  Cougar counted time with their breaths, listening to a minute pass, then two, as Jensen settled again.  Jensen watched him the whole time, breathing when he breathed.

Eventually, he seemed mostly back to normal, and he met Cougar’s eyes and nodded—he was still okay.  Cougar rocked back a little, intending to get to his feet before offering Jensen a hand up, and was surprised when Jensen latched on tighter to his shirt rather than letting go, making a quiet sound of protest.  Cougar stopped moving and looked him over, trying to figure out what was happening—what had he missed?—but Jensen didn’t seem to be in pain, just a little sad, a little desperate, and Cougar hadn’t realized how much it had been hurting Jensen to watch him pulling back, even though he hadn’t meant it like that, hadn’t meant to—

Jensen interrupted his thoughts by leaning forward, achingly slow, until he finally pressed his head into the crook of Cougar’s neck, breathing against Cougar’s skin.

Cougar froze.  He would have suspected Jensen of being cruel, if he had thought that Jensen actually remembered anything that had happened after the explosion.  But it would only be Cougar who had nightmares about holding Jensen against his chest and listening to him choking—blood against his neck, the taste of iron on his lips as he forced air into Jensen’s lungs—Jensen didn’t know any of that.

And anyway, this version of Jensen was warm and alive against him, breathing dry and even, and he wasn’t going to die.  He wasn’t.  Not if Cougar had anything to say about it, anyway, and maybe it didn’t make sense to keep pushing Jensen away when he thought about it like that—it was only that much farther to go to catch Jensen if he started to fall.

 _Okay_ , Cougar thought, _okay, I give up_ , and pulled Jensen closer instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! (Also, sue me: I like alternate POVs. Still, I promise the next one will be something new!)


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